


Caelo Tonantem

by Masu_Trout



Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Awkward Flirting, Canon-Typical Violence, Crucifixion, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Medicinal Drug Use, Mistaken Identity, Rescue Missions, Wilderness Survival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-15
Updated: 2016-08-15
Packaged: 2018-07-26 02:38:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7556869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Masu_Trout/pseuds/Masu_Trout
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>The fourth time Arcade woke, it was to the sight of an Enclave Eyebot staring down at him.</i>
</p><p>Being captured by Legionaries and sentenced to death isn't exactly Arcade's idea of a good time. All the same, he's not quite sure whether to be grateful when he's rescued by a strange wastelander who may or may not be a Legion spy (and, for that matter, may or may not be completely insane).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Caelo Tonantem

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kopfkino](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kopfkino/gifts).



> Many thanks to andreaofuerte for giving me the opportunity to write this fic. I hope you enjoy it!

Being crucified was a whole lot less pleasant than the medical textbooks made it sound, and that was _saying_ something.

Arcade had read up on acidemia and asphyxia and all the other lovely things being hung from a pole could do to the human body—kind of hard to avoid the issue, given current events—but it was one thing to look at an illustration in an Old World book or a corpse on the side of the road and think _poor bastard_. It was quite another entirely to be the one on the cross.

“I in malam crucem,” Arcade hissed as as a Legionary tugged particularly hard on a piece of rope, pulling his arm tight against the rough-hewn wood.

“What was that?” The Legionary snapped. His face contorted into a scowl as he stared up at Arcade.

Stupid costume party wannabes didn't even know their Latin. Probably a bunch of new recruits—Arcade doubted there was even a halfway-experienced soldier among them, let alone a veteran.

God, what a way to go.

He considered explaining the phrase for a moment, asked himself whether it would _really_ make things any better for him, and sighed. “Nothing,” he murmured, trying to sound small and scared. It wasn't difficult.

The Legionary glared at him for another moment before nodding sharply and stepping back. “That's what I thought.”

Another three people—two dressed in the Legion's armor, the third wearing a slave's rags—were already lashed to posts. They'd been there a few hours at least; Arcade was a late, impromptu addition. 

_Lucky me_ , he thought. Made it just in time for the party.

One of them moaned, high and piteous, the sound cutting across the clearing, and Arcade's gut twisted.

He didn't want to go this way. He also had absolutely no delusions about his chance of survival.

At least he'd fought. It was a small comfort, especially at a time like this, but he clung to it nonetheless. Five heavily-armed Legionaries against one scrawny doctor with a plasma pistol wasn't odds any sensible person would take—hell, he would have bet against himself if anyone had offered a wager—but he'd managed to surprise them with his ripper when they thought he was disarmed. He'd gotten one of them in the throat and gave another a deep ash across the arm. 

The man he'd cut earlier hung back from it all, pressing a dirty rag against the still-oozing wound. Knowing the Legion's standards of medical care, he would probably succumb to tetanus or blood poisoning or infection within the next few days. 

It probably wasn't very Follower-like of him to be pleased about that. 

_Judie'll let it slide,_ he thought, then realized when the head Legionary glared at him again that he'd accidentally said it out loud. Arcade was losing track of reality fast; he was already disoriented, woozy, and that was after less than a minute of being strung up. He'd been dehydrated to start with, hit his head hard when he finally went down…

He was a mess in all sorts of ways. Nothing new there, he supposed. Maybe it would end up being a blessing—given the choice, he'd rather spend his last few days hallucinating Vertibirds and Eyebots and God knew what else than staring out at the unchanging Mojave desert and listening to the others die.

“Look upon the face of wickedness,” the head Legionary said, his voice booming out across the empty desert. Arcade started, only to realize the man was talking to him anymore; he was standing in front of the crucifixes and facing his men. “The Legion is the enemy of vice and of perversion, a symbol to all…”

It seemed an unnecessarily elaborate speech for a crowd of three; Arcade had a feeling the man had been preparing it for a while. He'd probably imagined something a little more grand for his first time executing someone. The thought sent a twist of amusement through Arcade even as his arms began to shake with pain.

The world swam before him. His head hurt, his lungs hurt… every part of his body was slowly being taken over by pain.

Arcade blacked out before the Legionary even finished his speech.

\---

He came to occasionally over the next few… hours? Days? and each time he wished he hadn't.

The first time all he could feel was pain; there was nothing in his world but the agony in his bound arms and sun beating down on his exposed skin. He screamed and sobbed himself back to unconsciousness, begging for mercy the way he'd promised himself he wouldn't when he was captured.

The second time was near the opposite and all the more terrifying: he could hardly feel anything at all. The burn in his arms and legs was still there, but it was muted. Distant. He had a vague feeling that meant something bad, medically speaking, but couldn't recall the term for his symptoms. Instead, he just watched a pair of crows circle lazily overhead and wondered if they'd wait 'til he was dead before they started trying to eat him.

The third time… well, the third time was the point when he realized he'd gone insane.

He woke to the sound of voices. Two at the very least, and maybe even three or four: one might have been nothing more than a dog's barking and another sounded almost like a very small laser pistol firing. 

_Can't trust my ears_ , he thought woozily. Hallucinations could be visual, auditory, tactile, gustatory… Most likely his brain was just supplying some especially interesting noises to make up for the fact that he couldn't see shit. He'd lost his glasses after the second time he passed out and now everything was just a blur.

Arcade decided fuzzily that he might as well humor his brain. If this was going to be the last thing he'd ever hear, it might well be important. Or insipid and self-deprecating, more likely, but there was always that slim chance.

“You're cutting them down?” asked one of the voices. Deep, gruff, completely emotionless; Arcade could imagine it belonging to a particularly intelligent deathclaw just as easily as a human being.

“Seems cruel not to,” replied another. Higher-pitched but still undeniably male, he had the raspy voice of someone who'd spent a lifetime out in the Mojave. Perhaps a caravaneer, then, or maybe a raider. “If we can't help them, we can at least give them a better death.”

Arcade nodded approvingly at that, or at least he would have if he'd still been able to move. Official policy of the Followers was to cut down and mercy-kill any crucifixion victims found. It wasn't always followed—some of them found it easier to ignore suffering rather than end it—but he believed it was the duty of a doctor. _Primum non nocere_ took on new meanings with the world in ruins.

He must have muttered something aloud, because all of a sudden there was silence. Arcade kept his breathing as still and even he could, trying to figure out whether the hallucinations had vanished or merely stopped talking for a moment.

A dark blob appeared suddenly in his vision. It stood below his cross, facing up at him just as the Legionary had before.

“Holy shit,” said the raspy voice. It sounded closer now, and the part of Arcade's brain that was still capable of leaps of logic matched voice and shape together. “Boone, I think this one's still kicking.”

The sharp sound of a rifle cocking split the air. “I can fix that.”

“What? No, fuck, you can't just— _goddammit_ , Boone!”

For a few moments all Arcade could hear was scuffling, interspersed occasionally by a bestial growl or more of the strange mechanical whistling. A pair of formless shadows danced before his eyes; if he _really_ squinted, he could make out what looked like an animal's head perched on one of them.

Finally, the huskier voice swore quietly. “You heard him. You know what he is. Even if you _can_ save him…”

“If there's a chance, I'm going to try. No matter who he might have been. Pretty sure he's out now anyway, one way or another.” The raspy voice huffed out a deep breath. “Look, you keep to the original plan, okay? Shouldn't be anything you can't handle easy. I'll stay here and we can regroup in a week.”

“And what are you going to do if you patch him up and he turns on you?”

Raspy voice snorted. “You see what shape he's in? He's not about to be doing anything more sternouous than holding his head up. If he so much as thinks about trying anything, Rex'll have his throat out before he twitches a muscle.”

A low growl followed the words—Arcade couldn't tell if the raspy-voiced person had made it or if had come from somewhere else. Did humans normally growl? He'd met Raiders who did, he was pretty sure, but Raiders did lots of strange things so perhaps that didn't count.

_God, I'm out of it. I'm going completely mad._

One of the voices snorted. “Fine. Your call, I guess. But I warned you.”

“Yeah,” the other agreed. “You did.”

After that there was silence, broken only by the scuffle of boots and the rustling of heavy cloth. Arcade felt pretty sure he was drifting in and out, because each time he blinked the light had changed and the sounds were different. It was a sickening, dizzying sensation, and it cut through the sharp agony in his arms and legs only to amplify them.

Weren't they going to kill him? Hadn't one of the voices been implying that? He couldn't even remember; the conversation had slipped through his head like water through a sieve. The pain was all he could focus on for more than a moment at a time.

If they were planning to kill him, he hoped they did it soon.

Finally, he heard a voice once more: the raspier one again, closer than he'd been before. Arcade could hear it almost directly in his ear, and—if he really stretched his imagination—he could almost pretend he felt the warmth of a human form pressed against his right side.

“Okay,” said the voice. “I won't lie to you, this is going to feel _awful_.”

There was some sort of quip to be made there—something along the lines of _can it get any worse?_ —but before Arcade had the chance to will the words to his lips there was a tug at his arm.

He flinched back from the pain, only to be stopped by the ropes binding him. A soft tug on the wire there, a sound like metal-through-metal…

And suddenly Arcade _really_ understood pain. He screamed, high and wordless, as his abused arm dropped heavily to his side. Blood rushed through veins it had been denied access to for so long, bringing with it a new, fresh agony. Muscles trembled and spasmed, moving without purpose or permission after so long strapped in one place.

He'd been so, so wrong. It _could_ get worse.

“Please,” he begged the wavy figure in front of him. “Please, please…”

_Please end it. Please help me. Please do something, anything._

“Shhh,” the voice murmured, a gesture so useless that Arcade wanted to laugh. Would have laughed, if he weren't so busy screaming. “It'll be better soon. Promise.” 

Another tug on his opposite arm, and suddenly there was nothing holding Arcade to the crossbeam anymore. He sagged forward, completely unable to support his weight or even grab onto the wood of the crucifix for help, only to be caught by the formless shape. The man held him awkwardly across his shoulder with one arm and reached down towards the remaining ties with the other.

Arcade knew even before he heard the wire snap that he'd been freed. The sudden jolt of agony in his legs was more than enough of a sign.

He was babbling mindlessly now, broken strings of names and places and words in English and Latin alike passing through a throat so parched and bloody he probably didn't even sound human. He wanted the pain to stop, wanted to go back to the numbness and the crows and the endless blue sky. 

He'd never been good at this from the other side of the table. It was why Julie had put him on research on the first place. ( _No bedside manner_ , she'd said, and he'd known she wasn't wrong.) He couldn't deal with the patients who screamed and cried; he always just wanted them all to _be quiet_ so he could hurry up and starting helping them already.

He understood his patients a little better now.

The strange person lowered him gently to the ground, muttering comforts as he did. Arcade ignored them all, couldn't shut out the pain enough to focus on them, but he didn't (couldn't) ignore the feel of a needle sliding into the crook of his elbow. Another followed it, then another.

Numbness swept slowly through his body, chasing away the pain and the fear together. 

_Med-X_ , Arcade thought. He recognized the symptoms.

 _Thank you,_ he tried to choke out, but his lips caught on the first syllable and couldn't go any further. 

The last thing he saw was that blurry figure standing over him.

-

The fourth time Arcade woke, it was to the sight of an Enclave Eyebot staring down at him.

Good start, that. He was quickly beginning to realize he preferred the more obvious hallucinations; they were easier to tune out. 

He ignored the image and instead took stock of his body. He still hurt, but so much less than before; it was the difference between night and day. Now he could feel each little individual scrape and bruise and ache, instead of the indiscriminate, all-consuming mass of pain he'd been drowning under before. His hands and feet had the worst of it—hardly surprising, considering—but his chest ached too. Most unexpected was the pain in his hips and shoulders. Arcade could only assume they'd done a lot of the work in holding him up while he was tied there.

His head felt fuzzy, which was probably a side effect of the Med-X. Assuming there had been Med-X, that was. Arcade frowned, trying to think back to those confused, blurry memories. He'd thought he'd seen a growling man with the head of an animal, thought he'd heard a voice like a broken radio. How much of that had been real? Had he really been cut down from the crucifix at all, or was this the last dream of a dying man?

Well, better to treat it as partially real, at least. He'd lose nothing if he was wrong. For now, Arcade would assume he'd been… rescued, somehow, by someone with a big heart and a decent stash of drugs.

Stranger things had happened in the wastes. Probably.

His glasses were still gone, but his vision seemed a little clearer now. He was under some sort of shade source: an overhanging piece of rock or a tarp, perhaps, he couldn't quite tell. The cover ended a few feet away, extending just far enough to keep Arcade's body out of the merciless Mojave sun. Beyond it, he could see the bright blue of a cloudless Wasteland day. Reddish-brown dirt stretched out towards the horizon, broken only by the occasional shrub or stone.

And, of course, the machine.

Arcade tried to turn his head, both to get away from the unceasing stare of the Eyebot and to see what might be beside him, but even that slight movement sent a wave of dizziness rolling through him.

“Damn.” Black spots danced across his eyes. Nausea churned his stomach. He took a deep breath and pressed his eyes tightly shut, willing away the worst of the pain. “Moving is a bad idea, then. Okay.”

When he opened his eyes again, the Eyebot was gone.

_Well, there's at least one positive to that. I guess horrible pain clears hallucinations up nicely. I'll have to report that finding to Julia._

The sound of boots crunching on dirt broke him out of his—admittedly ridiculous—train of thought. Close and coming closer, and with a loose, confident sort of stride. Whoever it was, they clearly felt at home in the wasteland. 

(When Arcade had set out from the Followers' camp, he'd slunk over every hill like he was expecting a deathclaw to drop out of the sky onto his head. All that caution, and it hadn't helped him a bit.)

He blinked as a shadow fell over him. 

The stranger was wearing a mishmash of armor: a stitched-together coat covered in patches of brown and black leather, pants wrapped here and there with pieces of chain or metal guards, thick work boots, and fingerless gloves stained with what might have been dirt or blood. And, on his head… 

On his head he wore a coyote's skin, the muzzle perched atop his forehead and the beast's empty eye sockets staring out across the desert. Arcade was no fool; he recognized the mark of of one of Caeser's standard-bearers, even missing the rest of the armor they usually wore.

 _Legionary_. 

Arcade sighed. Before, the sight would have flooded his veins with fear, but now all he could muster was a vague sort of resignation.

It shouldn't have been a surprise. Who else would have motive to save him? They must have realized he was with The Followers and decided to… well, Arcade wasn't sure exactly _what_ they'd want with him; Caeser's history wasn't something either side liked to delve into much. He was fairly certain, though, that he wasn't going to like whatever it was.

The Legionary bent down to look at him, giving him a forced grin. “So, you're awake. How's it feel to be back in the land of the living?”

The raspy voice was familiar; he hadn't dreamed up all of what happened before, at least. This was one of the two who'd cut him down.

Arcade swallowed, grimacing as his tongue slid against his parched throat. He wanted some sort of clever quip, but the best he could manage was, “been better.” 

“Yeah, I bet.”

There was a soft sound, the _snap_ of plastic breaking, and then the Legionary pushed a bottle to Arcade's lips.

 _Water_. Arcade drank it down greedily, swallowing heavily when the feel of it hit his throat. It was warm, probably irradiated, and the best thing Arcade had ever tasted in his life. It could have been Caeser himself pouring it down his throat and he would have taken it just as easily.

He followed the bottle as it was pulled back, forcing himself to sit up as far as he could manage to chase the last few drops. 

“Hey. Calm down.” The man pushed Arcade softly back against the bedroll. “There's plenty more. I just don't want you getting sick gulping it all down right now.”

That was fair enough—Arcade would have said the same to any Freeside patient—but it was very different being on the other end of extreme dehydration. Every cell in his body was screaming at him for more.

With one smooth motion, the Legionary dumped the rest of the water bottle over Arcade's head. Arcade sputtered, glaring up at the man, but he couldn't deny how good it felt to have something other than dirt and heat against his skin. The water trickled down through his hair, across his cheeks, pooled on his chin and disappeared into the collar of his dirtied lab coat. It was a sensation he'd never thought he'd feel again.

Arcade ran a hand against his face, rubbing at layers of dirt and peeling skin. His own touch hurt; his skin was sore and aching and raw from exposure. “I must look pretty pathetic right now, huh?” He wanted the words to come out uncaring, a little show of bravado: _see? I'm not afraid of you._ Instead, he was pretty sure he mostly sounded insecure.

“Well, I don't know about that. Under the ligature marks and the scabbing and the sunburn, you seem like a decent-looking guy.” He flicked his eyes up and down Arcade's supine body. “I'd avoid getting tied to shit and left to die in the future, though—red is _not_ your color. You look a bit like a Nuka-Cola wrapper.” The Legionary smiled a little and then, to Arcade's surprise, lowered himself down into the dirt. He sat cross-legged next to the bedroll, one hand resting easily on his knee and the other propping up his chin. 

This close, Arcade could finally see his face in some detail: it was plain, mostly, especially in comparison to the face of the animal he was wearing, but the curve of his smile and the openness of his dark eyes lent him a strange sort of charisma. It wasn't a politician's face or even a military leader's, but Arcade could easily imagine him as the sort of man you met in a back-alley bar and ended up spilling your whole life story to. 

His most interesting feature by far was a pair of small, elliptical scars that dotted his forehead, near to touching but not overlapping. Gunshot wounds would have been Arcade's first guess, close range and from a decent-caliber weapon, but no one could have survived something like _that_. 

Bloatfly stings then, maybe, or perhaps a bad hit from a particularly ramshackle melee weapon. Things like that didn't normally leave such precise marks, but the Mojave was full of people with odd scars; it was an inevitable side effect of living in a murderous, barely-regulated society surrounded by people and animals that wanted you dead. (And, in the case of Caeser's Legion, following the orders of a madman who expected you to throw yourself into battle with every possible Mojave danger the moment you spotted it. He certainly wouldn't be surprised if the Legionary's scar came from some sort of training-related incident.)

It hit Arcade suddenly that this man might be a Frumentarius: the gear matched up easily enough, as did the face and the survival skills. Hopefully not—he was pretty sure he was in deep enough trouble without his every half-lucid move being watched by a trained Legion spy.

The Legionary snorted. Only then did Arcade realize he'd been staring at the man for a good thirty seconds without saying anything.

“Not much of the talkative type, huh?” Something in his face darkened and twisted. “Or perhaps you'd prefer it if I spoke to you in Latin?”

Ahh, _there_ it was, the coldness Arcade had been expecting. Behind the friendly face and the easy hospitality lurked a warrior's demeanor. Arcade tried to imagine how it had happened; the Legionary recruit had told his superior of the strange man he'd met, dressed in a doctor's coat and spitting out Caeser's language, and then… what? There were many things Caeser might want him for, none of them good: a slave, an unwilling translator, a hostage, a threat to be disposed of personally.

“Futue te ipsum,” Arcade said tiredly, not knowing or caring whether the Legionary would understand him. Some of the higher-up soldiers did, and this man seemed intelligent enough.

If The Legionary did understand, he wasn't too bothered by the insult. Arcade flinched when he lifted his hand from his chin, expecting to be struck, but instead the Legionary turned his attention to a pack lying on the ground against an outcropping of rock.

“That's about what I thought,” he said dismissively, as if Arcade's words were nothing more than a childish tantrum. “If you think you might be able to keep it down, I do have some food in here. Pork n' Beans, some InstaMash… irradiated shit, mostly, but it keeps well if you don't mind the glow.”

At the word _food_ , his stomach contracted painfully. Yes, apparently he was hungry. 

“InstaMash would be fine,” he said, a touch warily, waiting for the strings attached to the offer to make themselves known. “If you don't have caviar on hand, that is.”

The man actually laughed a bit— _would you look at that, an actual sense of humor in The Legion_ —and shifted over to pull the pack open and rummage through it.

Arcade wasn't paying attention to the pack, though. All of his attention was taken up by what the change in the man's posture had revealed: a pistol, strapped to his hip, half-covered by his jacket.

 _Okay. Think._ He was still weak, but you didn't need any particular strength to fire a ten-millimeter. This close, if he took the man by surprise…

There was no time to weigh his options. Arcade lunged for the gun.

“Shit!” the man snarled, throwing himself backwards, but there was little space under this tarp and his back hit the rock wall with nowhere else to go. “You fucking _bastard_ , fuck you!”

He lashed out, catching the side of Arcade's head with a heavy blow. He tasted blood but hung on; he could feel the shape of the gun's grip in his hands, if he could just _get it out of its holster already_ —

They tumbled across the ground together. Dirt and rock scraped against Arcade's sunburnt skin, leaving trails of agonizing fire. Adrenaline—the desperate desire to _not die here, damn it_ —was the only thing that kept him holding on. Time wasn't on his side; his strength was fading fast. The man undoubtedly had other weapons somewhere, and if he reached them Arcade was dead.

His only saving grace was that the Legionary was being oddly gentle; his blows hurt but didn't cripple, and he fought like he was trying to pry Arcade off his weapon rather than actually kill him.

 _Reluctant,_ Arcade thought, and then _wants to take me alive_ , and struggled all the harder.

“Rex!” the man howled, which was strange. Arcade had time enough for a brief moment of confusion—why would a soldier start screaming about kings in the middle of a struggle?—before a mass of fur and chrome filled his vision and teeth like knives sank deep into his arm.

Arcade bit down on a scream, rolling backward to protect his head and face. It did little to help; the beast just rolled with him, using his own weight against him to help sink its teeth in deeper.

The creature holding him was some sort of dog gone horribly wrong; an exposed brain case glowed brightly between the things ears and its lower jaw was cold metal rather than soft flesh. He could he hear the gears and circuits whirring as the creature shook him, and its paws made unnatural grinding noises as the dog scrabbled for purchase in the loose dirt. Trying to pull his arm free was useless and trying to fight back even worse than that; with the amount of metal on this thing, he'd more likely break his hand trying to hit the dog than actually cause it any pain. 

Instead, Arcade went limp. His heart was beating faster than a Psycho addict's and everything in him wanted to try and get away from the monster (the monster _s_ ) in the cave with him. But he also didn't want to get torn apart by this thing—that seemed a particularly miserable way to go.

After a moment or two, the Legionary seemed to realize Arcade was done. “Hold, Rex,” he said tiredly. The look on his face was twisted, knifelike: tiredness and barely-contained rage in equal measure.

The dog growled, sending painful shocks through Arcade's arm, and then released its bite. He couldn't hold back an agonized little gasp as open air hit the wounds. 

Already blood was welling up; a sickening warmth was gathering across his forearm and the sleeve of his coat stuck damply to his skin. Arcade tried to pull his arm in a little closer so he could inspect the bites, but froze when the dog snarled at him again.

He was going die here. He'd been saved from crucifixion only bleed out on the ground because he couldn't do something as simple as grabbing a goddamn gun.

“You fucking—” the Legionary bit down what he was going to say, shaking his head angrily. “Boone was right about you people. _Fuck_.” He slammed his fist against the dirt and scowled at Arcade. “You know he's not going to want you back, right? He put you out here for a _reason_ , and no matter what it was he's not going to take it back. There's no hero's welcome for you if you show up in his tent with my head on a spike. Best you'll get is a quicker death the next time around, and if you really wanted that you could've just asked.”

“Wait.” Admittedly the fight and the blood loss and the days of exposure were doing some funny things to his processing skills, but Arcade was suddenly pretty sure he'd missed an important piece somewhere. Who'd put him out here? Why would he being _going back_ to anyone? “Hold on a moment. Let's pretend, hypothetically, that I'm extremely confused. What exactly are we talking about?”

“What are we _talking about_?” His hands twisted together, wringing the air as if it were Arcade's neck. “We're talking about fucking Legion assholes who're so blindly loyal to Ceasar that they'll run back to him with their tail between their legs the moment they get a chance to be free from him.” His voice was a snarl, more animal than human. 

“Okay,” Arcade said. “Okay. And we're discussing this because you think I'm a member of Caeser's Legion.”

The expression that crossed the face of the Legionary—the not-Legionary? The _very strange person_ , he decided—was probably more satisfying than it should have been. His mouth turned down into a confused little frown, his eyebrows knit together, and he stared at Arcade as though some piece of his own puzzle was falling into place.

“…Yes,” the man said finally. “that seems like a good summary. If, hypothetically, you were confused.”

“All right.” Arcade nodded. “And the thought of me being in Caeser's Legion upsets you because, hypothetically, you don't serve the man. And—again hypothetically—might not be a fan of him in general.” 

“I don't think that one needs a _hypothetically_ , actually. I feel pretty confident saying I'm not with the Legion.” The man frowned down at Arcade, pressing a hand against his temple. “And from your line of questioning, I'm going to guess that you're trying to tell me you aren't with them either.”

Arcade sighed. The marks of the dog's teeth in his arms throbbed in time with the breath, as if to remind him what a complete and utter idiot he was. _Great job, detective._. Next time, maybe he could question the man offering him food and shelter about his allegiances _before_ trying to shoot him in the face. “I—”

The man held up a hand. “Wait a minute. You're not going to try and kill me again, are you?”

“I'm not sure how much my word means to you right now, but… no. I promise I won't.” 

“All right, then.” The man nodded, as if that one sentence had eased all his fears, and reached back into his pack again. After a moment of searching he pulled out a stimpak, a thin vial of Med-X, and a roll of bandages.“Let me bandage you up while you talk.”

“Um.” Well, that certainly wasn't the response he'd been anticipating. “How much Med-X have you used on me by now?”

“Fair question.” The stranger smiled, looking almost apologetic. “You're definitely going to be nursing a bit of an addiction after this whole thing. I wouldn't worry about that just yet, though—at least wait until you've stopped and bleeding everywhere.”

“No, I mean…” Arcade paused, not quite sure how to phrase the question without sounding as though he were sizing up the man to rob him. (Not like he'd succeed, but still.) “How are you on supplies? Do you have anything left over for yourself?”

He'd given Arcade water, Med-X, stimpaks, offered him food on top of that… not to mention the bit where he'd saved his life. Arcade tallied up the caps in his head, an anxious sort of feeling growing in the pit of his stomach as he realized just how deeply he owed him.

The man snorted. “Oh, that? Don't worry about that” He grinned at Arcade, something mischievous in his expression. “Frowning doesn't do a face like yours any good. I've got an in with a couple of Khans, I can get my chems at a discount. Plus, I make most of my own stimpaks these days. Not much of a drain on caps there.”

 _Make my own stimpaks…_ That was important, that was _very_ fucking important, but it also wasn't a chain of thought Arcade could afford to follow right now. Not when the man was leaning over the crook of his elbow and easing the Med-X needle into the soft skin there.

Fuzziness dropped like a blanket over Arcade's brain. Not as bad as it could be—maybe he was on a half-dose, or maybe he was just developing a tolerance for the stuff—but enough to numb the worst of the pain when the man turned his injured arm over to look at the bites.

“Wow, Rex, you really got him good.”

The dog-beast barked happily, its gleaming metal jaw falling open to reveal a pink and lolling tongue. 

“So,” the man said, “I figure I let you ask a few questions. You up for answering a few in return?”

It seemed like an honest offer—almost weirdly so, actually. Like the stranger really wouldn't pressure him if he just clammed up. But for all Arcade lacked a doctor's bedside manner, he certainly wasn't opposed to talking right now (provided, of course, that they didn't wander onto dangerous topics). Silence was a poor distraction from pain, and anyway this man was… interesting.

 _Interesting_. God, what a cop-out sort of word. He knew _exactly_ what he was starting to feel towards this man, and he also knew how likely something like that was to pan out. He was a difficult enough person to deal with without attempted murder as a relationship-starter. Better to leave that box firmly shut, for the sake of his safety and his sanity alike.

“Okay,” Arcade said. He leaned his head back, resting against the thin fabric of the bedroll. “Ask away.”

“So, first question: why the hell did you think I was Legion?”

Arcade's already-burnt cheeks went even hotter. “Your _hat_ ,” he said desperately, dying ( _ha!_ ) to prove it wasn't all him going crazy. “It's part of the uniform of a vexillarius.”

“A vexi..?”

“Vexillarii are Caeser's standard-bearers. They carry his flag into battle—and wear coyote skins on their head, don't ask me why.”

“Well. That's, ah, interesting.” The stranger looked at him with a confused sort of expression; too late Arcade realized that knowing the intricacies of Caeser's army wasn't exactly making him look innocent here.

“ _And_ ,” he continued quickly, “you rescued me, even though I wasn't anyone to you. I figured Caeser must've wanted me alive, so he sent someone back to pull me down from the crucifix. Plus”—and this was his smoking laser pistol, so to speak—“your dog is branded with the Legion's symbol.”

“Huh.” The stranger actually leaned over to check, as if he'd never bothered to look his cyberbeast over before. “So he is. He's seen a lot of owners, I've been told. I guess it's no surprise he ended up there for a while.” The stranger paused. “Though, if I remember right, you never saw Rex until _after_ you tried to kill me.”

“Ah.” If Arcade hadn't lost his glasses, he'd be fiddling with them. He could feel the urge all the way down to his fingertips. “I don't suppose I could convince you I'm clairvoyant.”

The stranger actually laughed at that. He had nice teeth, much better than he usually saw on Wastelanders, and Arcade immediately hated himself for noticing. “Considering you're not dripping with wealth, lounging on the Strip in a pile of your ill-won chips… I'm going to go with no.”

The stranger had been working at Arcade's sleeve as he spoke, slowly cutting away the fabric with a small knife. Once he'd pulled the entire sleeve up and away, he reached for his pack. There was the sound of plastic uncapping again, and before Arcade could react the stranger had dumped a fresh bottle of water over the wounds on his arm.

Arcade sucked in a breath, determined not to wince. “Well, in that case, my brain was addled by the Med-X you so cruelly forced me to become addicted to?”

“ _That_ I'll accept. Though I hope you know that when I'll retell this story it'll be about a stone-cold crazy man in a doctor's coat trying to murder me because he didn't like my hat.” The stimpak was the next to come out; he pulled the protective tip off the syringe and positioned it carefully against Arcade's lower wrist. “I'm going to get so free many drinks off of that story.”

“ _Wait,_ ” Arcade snapped out. The stranger paused, looking up from the injection site. “Inject it about an inch above the wound. It'll work faster.”

The stranger paused a moment, considering, then moved the stimpak up to where Arcade had indicated. “All right. I take it the labcoat's not just for show, then?”

“I…” No point in trying to hide it, Arcade supposed—he was already entrusting this man with his life. Not like having his loyalties known ( _these_ loyalties, at least) could really be used to hurt him any worse. “I'm with the Followers of the Apocalypse. I'm more into the research side of things, but I do have a fair bit of practical knowledge.”

“Wait.” The stranger's eyes went wide with surprise, and he drove the needle of the stimpak in a fair bit harder than was necessary. “Are you _Arcade Gannon_?”

“How the hell do you know my name?” He bit his lip the moment the words slipped out. Great strategy, there. Give the mysterious man all he could possibly need to know.

“Julie Farkas asked me to find you,” the stranger said.

“...What?” Arcade asked. He hadn't expected Julie would _care_ all that much. She was a good woman, but he wasn't exactly the most personable fellow and his research was hilariously pointless. Followers disappeared into the wastes all the time, lured away by the promise of more lucrative (if less morally-upright) work, lost to starvation or dehydration or the many monsters of the Mojave. There was no reason she should be missing him in particular.

“Well, not me specifically. She's been bringing it up to anyone who stops by, from what I heard.” At Arcade's incredulous look, he sighed. “Not exactly the best time to have this discussion, but… well, you got set up. The supply cache you came out here looking for doesn't exist.”

Arcade frowned, more to himself than the stranger. “I figured that one out a while ago.” The rest of the Followers had been against even looking for it—the rumors were too vague, the location too dangerous. But he'd heard about the possibility of fresh stimpaks and boxes and boxes of RadAway, and couldn't possibly resist trying to find it.

He had an energy weapon. He'd been trained by the last and best remaining soldiers of the Enclave. What could go wrong? Arcade snorted. _Idiot_.

“No, I mean, it _really_ doesn't exist. As in, the Legion planted spies in your people. From what she told me, they've been trying anything they can to get Follower doctors out on their own. The whole fort's been on edge for weeks, rooting out the Legionaries.” The man shrugged; the tension in his shoulders belied the apathy of the gesture. “Farkas thinks Caeser's trying to take your people alive. Thinks he wants them for something important. She feels guilty as hell for letting you out of her sight.”

Arcade swore under his breath. He'd fallen right into their hands, then, and of course it was up to everyone else to pick up the pieces of his failure. “That makes a lot more sense than I'd like. When I ran into the Legion, things felt weird. It didn't seem like a random patrol.” There'd been an order to their attack—they'd seemed prepared for him, and _goddamn_ did he feel like an idiot for not noticing the importance of that.

That order had fallen apart pretty quickly once he'd hit the first Legionary with a faceful of plasma, though. He allowed himself a grim smile; they'd expected an egghead with no sense of self-preservation, not someone who could fight back. He'd have to thank Johnson for that one, assuming he ever saw him again.

“So, what, then? Julie sent you after me?” 

“No, not really.” He snuck a glance towards Arcade from the corner of his eye. “Though, if you want to tell her about how _valiantly_ I rescued you and how deserving of caps I clearly am in exchange for my heroics, I certainly wouldn't mind.”

“You single-handedly saved me from the clutches of a thousand Legates, armed with nothing but a rusty 10-millimeter pistol. Got it.”

“Make it ten thousand Legates and a set of brass knuckles and we've got ourselves a deal.”

Arcade couldn't help but laugh at that—there was something disarming in the man's smile and in the way he leaned lazily against the rock like he meant no harm and expected none to come to him—but a moment later, something important occurred to him. “So… why, then?”

“Hmm?” The stranger looked up from the fire.

“Why did you rescue me? Julie didn't send you looking for me, you thought I was with the Legion…” Like lightning, a fragment of memory flashed through his head: a deep voice rumbling angrily, the sound of a gun ready to fire. “There was someone else here, right? Someone who wanted to kill me?”

The stranger paused a second before nodding. “Yeah, that's right. Friend of mine—he's a good guy, if a bit quick on the trigger. He heard you going on in Latin and, well…” He shrugged, eyes on the ground. Like he should feel guilty for not magically realizing who Arcade was. “He's not a fan of the Legion. Thought it would be easier to clean the whole place up.”

It hit him, suddenly, how he must have looked to them: a man dressed in the coat of a Follower but speaking the language that Caeser had so thoroughly claimed for his own. A man tied to a crucifix, the sort of punishment they reserved for traitors or degenerates or failures.

Arcade shut his eyes in horror. _God_. He'd been delirious, babbling in any language he could remember; he must've sounded deranged. Like one of Caeser's hounds, staked out and left to starve.

“So, what, then? You saw a half-dead Legionary strung up on a crucifix and thought, 'hey, great idea here, let me stop where I am and set up camp so I can throw all my supplies at trying to nurse him back to health?'”

“Does it really seem so far-fetched that I might just not want you to die?”

Arcade snorted. “It would be nice if we lived in that sort of world, but in my experience things like that rarely happen.”

“Well, congratulations.” The stranger spread his arms wide. “Looks like a bit of New Vegas luck finally found its way to you. Shame it couldn't have hit you on the strip, or you'd be raking in the caps right now.”

“I'll take my life over money any day of the week.”Arcade gave him a wry grin. “And besides, from the way they run things down there I expect the Chairmen would boot my ass out onto the street before I had the chance to take too much of their money.”

“And what a shame it would be to damage an ass like yours.” The stranger gave him an exaggerated, pitiful look—eyelashes fluttering and all—from under the brim of his coyote-head hat.

If he weren't already burnt bright red, Arcade was pretty sure he'd be blushing. “Seriously, though. You just… decided on it?”

The stranger shrugged. “I got a second chance I wasn't expecting a little while back. I suppose I just felt like I ought to pass that on.” He gazed off into the middle distance, caught suddenly in a memory. Not a particularly good one, either, if the furrow of his brow was anything to go by.

Silence followed the man's words. Arcade didn't know how to follow that up with any sort of grace. Might as well go for the next best thing, then: sudden, awkward subject changes.

No wonder they'd put him on cactus-researching duty.

“So,” Arcade said, more abruptly than he'd meant to. “Do I get a name to put to the face? You know all about me, after all. It doesn't seem quite fair that I don't have anything to call you except Not-A-Legionary.”

A bitter little twist pulled its way across the stranger's mouth. “Well, I'm… I'm between names at the moment, actually. People have been calling me Courier Six, if that works for you.”

“Between names?” 

“Brain damage.” The stranger—Courier Six, Arcade corrected himself, though it seemed bizarre to call the man by what was so obviously a title rather than any sort of proper name—brushed his fingers against the twin scars on his forehead. “Long-ass story, and I'd rather avoid telling it until I figure out exactly how it ends.”

“Well, that's… vague. And strange.” Not like Arcade had any room to complain there, though, not with what he told people about his past. “Well, fine, I can accept vague. It's nice to meet you, Courier Six.”

“Nice to meet you too.” Courier Six smiled at him, quiet and somehow soft even on a face marred by scars. “So—you still up for some InstaMash, then? 'Cause I'm pretty fucking hungry.”

“That would be great. Thanks.” His stomach made its agreement known with a violent, painful twist; God, he very literally was starving, wasn't he? “I promise I won't kill you this time.”

Courier Six snorted. “Don't say that until you've seen me cook. I'm pretty sure Boone's wanted to strangle me more than once for it.”

There was more to be said, probably, but for now Arcade was content to lean back and watch as Courier Six fanned the dying embers back into a proper campfire.

Arcade's body was still ungodly weak. His shoulder was in tatters, held together by nothing more than stimpak-fresh skin and bandages. Still, watching his rescuer fight with the top of a box of InstaMash, he had to admit he felt… well, safe, almost.

 _That's new_ , he thought, a touch drowsily. _Blame it on the Med-X, I guess._

He drifted into a half-sleep to the smell of pre-packaged food and smoke.

–

As it turned out, the eyebot was real. And _not_ , Courier Six had informed him angrily, expendable.

It had shown up just as dinner was finally ready, though of course it couldn't actually eat; Arcade had woken to another hallucination hovering over him and tiredly ignored it— _don't do Med-X, kids_ —only to double-take when he realized that Courier Six was _not_ ignoring it. Quite the opposite, actually: he had one hand pressed against the thing's metal chassis, lightly stroking a finger just above its central grille.

If Arcade didn't know better, he would've thought Courier Six was petting it.

“God,” Arcade said, and then again, heavier: “ _God_.” He rubbed at his eyes. “Are you _Enclave_?”

Courier Six gave him a very concerned look. “Am I what, sorry?”

“Nothing. Just—nothing. Never mind, I'm only babbling. Habit of mine.” 

Courier Six could not be buying it any less if _it_ were a fresh-off-the-quarry live deathclaw, but he only blinked at Arcade for a moment and said, “okay.”

“Okay, great.” Then, because he had an amazing talent for sticking his foot in his mouth, Arcade asked, “So what is that thing, anyway?”

“ _This,_ ” said Courier Six in a tone of voice somewhere between _proud engineer_ and _doting parent_ , “is ED-E. He's a bit of a pet project, I guess? Guy over in Primm had him all pulled apart on his counter, said I could keep him if I could fix him up. He's been a great help.” He ran his fingernails over its off-yellow stripe of paint—yes, definitely petting it—and the thing actually _cooed_ in response.

That, unsurprisingly, set Rex to whining, and before Arcade had time enough to process what was happening Courier Six had a faceful of eyebot and a lapful of cyberdog and was enthusiastically petting both.

The remnants had told Arcade about eyebots occasionally: they spewed propaganda ( _Truth_ , Moreno always insisted), they relayed messages, they electrocuted trespassers. 

They most certainly did not chirp happily while being petted by strange wasteland wanderers.

“Can we at least send it away while we're eating?” Arcade asked, a little despondently. His life had already gotten insane enough these past few days; he did not need an unwelcome, dangerous reminder of his past on top of everything else. “I, um. I'm not a fan of robots.”

Courier Six raised an eyebrow. “Really? A scientific mind like you?”

“Well, I work with people.” Or cacti, but Courier Six didn't need to know that. “Seeing robots is difficult for me because I can't do anything to help them and that's just… hard. It's hard, that's all.”

“Oh my _god_.” Courier Six grinned wildly. The eyebot turned to face Arcade, and even the dog looked like it was laughing at him. “I can't decide whether I want you to be lying or telling the truth.”

“I'm a very honest man,” Arcade protested, then snapped his mouth shut. He wondered if this was how people who were forced to dig their own graves felt.

“Well, normally I'd say yes, and ED-E would trundle sadly off into the wastes to take on yet another lonely round of guard duty and we'd both feel terrible about ourselves”—the eyebot interjected with a miserable-sounding little beep—“but as a matter of fact we've got a storm coming soon. I'm not sending any of mine into that, so you're just going to have to deal for a while.” He paused, glancing towards Arcade with a sly expression on his face. “I promise ED-E won't look down on you for not being able to help him. He's a very forgiving bot.”

Arcade decided to ignore the jab, seeing as there was no possible way he could respond to it without sounding like even more of an idiot. Instead, he peered out the opening of their makeshift little shelter and into the cloudless evening sky. “A storm? Seriously?”

“I'm a courier. They pay me to know this shit.” He leaned over and shoved a tin can full of black-flecked paste into Arcade's hands. “Here's your burned InstaMash. Sorry I don't have better tableware to serve it in.”

It could have been served out of a mirelurk shell for all Arcade cared; the moment he caught sight of the food, his whole body tensed with desire. He was so hungry he could feel it in his chest, his head… it took him two bites scooped out with his fingers before he realized he'd been given a spoon.

Courier Six watched him shovel it down, an almost protective expression on his face. “How's it taste?”

“Best thing I've ever eaten,” Arcade said between inhales. The salt, the texture of something solid against his throat, the scent of potato and the faint chemical aftertaste every time he took a bite: it all added up to something beyond delectable.

“Wow, you _are_ starving.” The Courier dug into his own serving, taking much smaller bites than Arcade. Every three or four, he'd flip a glob of the stuff down to where Rex was laying and let the dog gobble it up. “Mind letting Boone know you said that once he gets back? Or maybe just give it to me in writing, that would be great.”

“I'll let him know.” Arcade paused. “Provided he doesn't shoot me on sight.”

“Ha!” Courier Six snorted and almost dropped his food. “Don't worry about that. Trust me, once he finds out you're not a Legionary—Hell, once he finds out you _shot_ a Legionary—he'll love you. And by _love_ I mean _accept your presence_ , but that's about as good as it gets with him.”

“Not the friendly type, huh?”

“Well.” Courier Six shrugged. “He's not much of a conversationalist and his sense of humor's drier than a mole rat's hide, but he's a good guy to have at your back. You'll get along fine, I think.”

That was a relief. Arcade was generally in favor of not making heavily-armed enemies.

A strange smile pulled its way across the Courier's face. “Plus, he ought to be in a good mood when he finds us again—he's out on the trail of a Legion patrol right now.” 

Well, that was… telling. And more than a little bit terrifying, to be honest. He approved of the act in theory—one less Legionary meant one fewer pair of hands to help rape and pillage and enslave the Mojave—but the idea of someone setting off into the desert like that, alone, with nothing but a set of tracks to follow… 

Courier Six hadn't even sounded the least bit worried. He was absolutely confident that Boone would return. That alone said more about the man than anything else he'd been told. 

Arcade's spoon hit the bottom of the can with a metal _clink_. He blinked in surprise; he hadn't realized he'd eaten so much. 

“More?” Courier Six asked. 

His first instinct was to say yes, but at the thought of eating anything more a thick sense of nausea bubbled up in his stomach. “Maybe not, actually. I think I should take it slow for now.”

“Probably a good idea.” Courier Six grimaced. “Tiny space like this, I'd rather you not start throwing up. We're going to be miserable enough without that added to the mix.”

As if on cue, a heavy gust of wind rolled through their encampment. The tarp rustled, snapping against its ties, and the fire flickered and leapt. The smell of rain came with it; when Arcade peered at the sky once more, he saw thick gray clouds gathering on the horizon. They blocked out the setting sun in places, casting black shadows across the desert.

“Won't be long now,” the Courier said, following Arcade's gaze.

“I'm sorry for doubting you.”

The next few minutes were a flurry of activity on everyone's part but Arcade's. Courier Six did something to the tarp that made their little camp's roof lay flatter and tighter to the rock than before. Rex paced back and forth in front of the entrance to the camp with his nose to the wind: checking for enemies brought near by the storm, Arcade imagined. Even the eyebot joined in, zapping at the campfire again and again with some sort of small laser until the wood was nothing more than dry ash. It an unusual way to put out a fire, and one that gave him some unpleasant mental images featuring that laser being turned against _him_ , but he couldn't deny it worked.

All he could do was watch as their cozy little camp turned into an even cozier (and smaller) rain shelter.

By the time Courier Six finished his work, apparently satisfied, the clouds covered most of the sky and the scent of rain was thick all around them. Arcade felt as though he were drinking the air as much as breathing it.

“We're still going to get a little damp,” Courier Six said, “but at least we shouldn't get washed away.”

It wasn't like Arcade had never been caught out in a storm, but before his goal had always been to get to safety as quickly as possible. Nasty things came out to play in the rain: centaurs, radscorpions, giant mantises. Deathclaws, sometimes, if a few particularly bloody campfire stories were to be believed. Camping in weather like this without so much as a burned-out building to hide in was a pastime only the truly insane or truly desperate would ever even consider.

Despite the dangers, though, he found he wasn't particularly worried. Maybe it was that he'd already cheated death once or maybe Courier Six's aura of confidence was catching. Either way, he couldn't imagine surviving all of this only to be brought down by rain.

Courier Six flopped down beside Arcade and pressed himself close. A dark red bottle appeared in his hand, seemingly from nowhere. He pressed it to his lips and tilted before handing it over to Arcade.

Vodka was his first thought, but he recognized the size and shape of the bottle and the way it rattled rather than sloshed. _Rad-X_. 

Arcade fished a few pills out with one finger and popped them into his mouth. It wasn't easy to swallow them without water, but the thought of ghoulification was a good motivator and anyway he'd already used up enough of Courier Six's supplies. He couldn't possibly ask for more— _especially_ not when his companion could put the pills away dry as if they were no bigger than mutfruit seeds.

Rex settled down beside Courier Six with a soft whine, his head on the man's lap and his body pressed up against his shoulders. The eyebot—Arcade shuddered—hovered to the back of the nest, just behind the dog, and settled itself there. It remained hovering a few centimeters off the ground, a quiet hum and the soft glow of various tiny lights the only signs that it was still registering stimulus.

“So, we're all ready, then?” Arcade asked.

Courier Six nodded. “Nothing to do but wait it out.”

Only a few days ago he'd been sure he was going to die. Only a few hours ago he'd been _hoping_ for it. Now, as he watched the sky darken and let his sore shoulder come to rest against Courier Six's body, he felt… well, pretty decent. Surprisingly not miserable, all things considered.

A distant peal of thunder rolled over the hills somewhere behind them. The rain couldn't be far behind.

In a sudden fit of _something_ (optimism, maybe, or insanity; the two very often turned out to be the same thing) Arcade tried to imagine the days ahead of him. He and Courier Six would stay here until he could walk half-decently, they'd rejoin with the hopefully-not-murderous Boone, and then… what? Arcade thought of himself returning to Freeside, to the drunks and the routine and the research, and found the idea didn't appeal to him at all. 

He didn't want this to end. _Fuck_ him and his stupid idealism and his desperation and his idiotic, childish, dreams of adventure, but he didn't want this to end.

He liked the thought of chasing down Legionaries. He liked the thought of traveling the wastes, finding people to help and _doing something_ instead of throwing himself into studies that might never pan out. And, most embarrassingly of all, he really liked the thought of spending more time with Courier Six. 

The man was enrapturing, friendly and kind and yet immensely competent in a way that was too casual to be faked. He'd spoken of his abilities like they meant nothing at all (so humble about them that Arcade himself had almost dismissed them), but Arcade knew the kind of skill it took to fix a junked eyebot, to nurse a crucified man back to health, to know when the storms were coming and how to survive them.

He was like something out of an old-world action film, given new life in the post-apocalypse.

Arcade leaned close and—cheeks burning with preemptive mortification—pressed a closed-mouth kiss to Courier Six's knuckles.

For a long moment, there was only silence, and then: “What was that for?” 

Courier Six sounded amused, not furious, which was a relief in and of itself; you never could tell these days, with so many people listening to the NCR's propaganda.

“A thank you, I guess.” Arcade reached towards his head, trying to fiddle with glasses he no longer had, before remembering and pulling his hands back down.

“Well, then.” Another pause, and then Courier Six's lips brushed against the top of his head. 

“I would've gone for your lips,” he said into the void left by Arcade's stunned silence, “but with how raw they are I think I'd just end up hurting you.”

“Huh.” Arcade cleared his throat, trying to force his thoughts back into something resembling reason. His body felt overwhelmed, electrified by the force of a simple, chaste kiss. He could try to blame this on the Med-X too, but already he knew he'd just be lying to himself. “That's, um. Probably for the best. Maybe later, then?” The words came out a question instead of the casual, uncaring remark he'd meant them to be.

 _When I'm following you around the Wasteland like a junkyard dog, helping with whatever ridiculous crusade you're on_ , he didn't add. 

“Yeah,” Courier Six said. There was just enough light left for Arcade to catch the curve of his smile. “Later sounds good.”

Outside their shelter, the storm's first raindrops began to fall.

**Author's Note:**

> I cannot explain just how tempted I was to name this thing 'Arcade and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good Very Bad Day', but that seemed a little over-long for a fanfic title, haha.
> 
> Also, if I've made any errors in regards to canon, I'd be happy to be corrected! I love Fallout for being such a huge, expansive universe, but sometimes that makes it easy to screw things up. (I had to go through this during the editing stage and take out multiple references to yao guai because I'd forgotten they only lived in Zion, whoops.)


End file.
